


Old Habits

by Felle



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 04:35:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19288258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle
Summary: Ghazan and Ming-Hua reacquaint themselves after their prison breaks.





	Old Habits

He wasn’t sure where to begin.

Ghazan looked up at the starlit sky, the same infinite tapestry he’d spent every night for thirteen years staring at, making up new constellations from the pinpricks of light he could see through the bars of his cell. He didn’t know if there was a way to grow tired of endlessness, but if there was, he had been getting there after about year two.

But he was free now. No more wood surrounding him and closing him in, no more ocean expanding out as far as he could see in every direction. He had been able to reach out and feel the sea floor at first, though he was never able to do anything with it before atrophy dulled his bending. Now, though…there was only a thin bedroll separating him from all the earth he could ever hope to bend. And yet, he simply couldn’t be bothered.

He turned on his side and waited for his eyes to adjust to the moonlight so he could see the woman on the next bedroll over. Ming-Hua looked even smaller than he remembered, a dehydrated shade of her former self that had spent the better part of an hour drinking down all the water she could find when they first freed her. Even now, more than two weeks later, her skin still seemed stretched tight over her cheekbones and the smell of sulfur clung to her despite all the baths.

“What are you looking at?” she asked without opening her eyes. Her voice was raspier than age would account for, and Ghazan had to tamp down a spate of anger at the White Lotus for confining them as they had. Better to have just killed them.

Still…some part of him was glad that they didn’t. “You,” he said. “I thought that was obvious.”

“You’re still as dense as those rocks you throw around.”

Ming-Hua opened her eyes and tilted her head to look back at him. Ghazan put one hand over his chest in mock affront. “You wound me. That’s what you want to do now? Fight? Because I kind of thought P’Li and Zaheer had the better idea.”

He couldn’t see the color rise up on her face, but it was easy enough to feel the way she shifted, curling up slightly. “Don’t remind me, I can feel their blood going crazy on the other side of the lake…but none of that makes me think I ought to just roll over for you.”

“I remember you doing some pretty enthusiastic rolling before.”

A tendril of water came whipping out of the basin she kept nearby and sang across his face, its hardened edge cutting across his cheek and drawing blood. “I remember that, too,” Ghazan said, wiping his face dry and flicking the blood away. “You have to find some new tricks. Or at least make it up to me.”

Ming-Hua scoffed, but then brought the end of the water back to his face and knitted the skin there closed. It was a warm, numbing feeling that left a persistent tingling feeling in its wake for several minutes. He touched his cheek and found it whole again, if a tiny bit wet. “There. Made up.”

“Come on, do you really want to spend the night alone? I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

“As if that’s ever what I wanted,” Ming-Hua said, and sat up. Ghazan watched her turn her head and pull at the straps holding her outfit in place with her teeth. The fabric slipped out of her mouth a few times before she growled in frustration. “This was easier when I never had to change.”

“Would you like some help?”

He didn’t have to see the glower she paid him to remember the countless ones he had burned into his memory, but he did see her shoulders slump. “Well, if you’re going to help, then help, don’t just lie there,” she said.

She shuffled over to his bedroll while he sat up and settled in between his legs with her back to him, pressed to his bare chest. Her hair was pinned into a bun for sleeping and pressed into his nose, smelling like salt and brimstone. Ghazan let his hands linger on her shoulders before he shrugged off the straps and pulled the front flap free, and Ming-Hua let out a long breath as the cool air pressed into her bare skin. She shifted in place and puffed her modest chest out as his hands slid downward. “Better?” Ghazan asked. A small affirmative sound was the only reply he got. Then, in a smaller voice, “I missed you.”

He started to pull away until she protested, nudging her back into his chest with her feet. “Finish taking it all off. And your pants. I want…I don’t know what I want, just do it.”

Everything was lying in a pile next to them soon enough, and Ghazan pressed his hand to her waist until she started the slow process of turning around. It was no easy task like it would be if she had arms, but she refused to let him help her and instead pivoted on one knee until she was facing him. She looked even smaller than usual, sitting seiza between his legs with no clothes to at least give her a typical silhouette and cover the way the outline of her ribs showed through her skin. Her head tilted. “Did you get _more_ tattoos?” she asked.

He looked down at some of the faded ink. It could have used with a touchup, but there was hardly time now. He shook his head. “Oh. I must have forgotten,” she said softly, before leaning forward and pressing her lips to his collarbone. She didn’t kiss him, not precisely, but she did trail over the length of his shoulders and the soft front of his throat.

“My mouth’s up here, you know.”

“I know where it is, it stays in the same place even though it never stops moving,” Ming-Hua said in false exasperation. “I don’t have any fingers, so this is the most sensitive part of my body. I’m just…trying to make sure I don’t forget again.”

His hands rested on the sides of her legs as she worked her way down, taking her time until she arrived at his hipbones. She made an annoyed sound at seeing the result of her attentions, but her back arched, and her breathing changed ever so slightly. Ghazan’s grip on her legs tightened. “You really only think of one thing, don’t you?” Ming-Hua asked.

“How do you think I stayed sane?”

“Please, you were never sane. But,” she said, kissing the tip and making him shudder, “that’s what I like about you.”

Ghazan knew he would get another cut if he put his hands on her head, so he drew them over her back instead, feeling the little dips and ridges of her spine moving in time with her rhythm. Some part of him wanted to lean back and enjoy what she was offering, but it seemed like such a waste, after all this time, to have the chance to touch her and not do so. If she was going to reacquaint herself with his body, then he would do the same, feeling at the tuck of her waist and the spot where her hips flared, her breasts, her shoulders, her cheeks, the bony little parts of her knees—

She stopped, far too early for his liking, and sat back up with a smirk at his sting of discomfort. “You seem dissatisfied,” she said dryly.

“Yeah, you might say that…anything I can do for you?”

“Help me up?”

His soreness faded quickly at that, and Ming-Hua deigned to let him fasten his hands under her thighs and lift her into his lap. She was lighter than he remembered, and Ghazan worried that he might break her in two despite her assertions to the contrary, but she didn’t seem in the mood for stopping. Her hips canted back and forth on him, teasing, while she enjoyed the turnabout of being taller than him for once. “Well, use your words,” Ming-Hua said with a thin smirk. “What do you want?”

“You.”

That seemed to wipe the smugness from her face, and Ming-Hua lightly kissed his cheek as she relaxed her legs and sank down on him. She stopped halfway with a pained whimper, making him press a questioning touch to her shoulder that she shook away. “Oh, stop it, I’m not made of glass. It’s been thirteen years and I didn’t have hands to keep myself busy. I’m a little out of practice.”

Finally she had taken all of him, and they both needed a long moment to get used to the feeling. Ming-Hua rested against his chest, held tight when Ghazan wrapped his arms around her. She didn’t complain. Her teeth sank into his skin briefly, a short sting to mark him in her own little way. “Well, go on, I can’t be expected to do everything,” she said, and straightened up. Ghazan rolled his eyes and helped her when she couldn’t generate enough force with only her legs, rocking her up and down while she fell forward and sank her teeth into the crook of his neck. There was a sting of pain when she broke the skin, but he didn’t mind. Her mark was more meaningful than any tattoo.

She didn’t slip off of him and return to her own bedroll, as she always had before. Instead Ming-Hua stayed in his lap, pressed against him, letting his fingers thread through the hair that had come lose in their excitement. “I don’t think they’ll lock us up again if we don’t manage this,” she said.

Ghazan tensed around her. “Probably not.”

“I’d rather you just end it for me if they’re closing in, I’m not going to sit in chi-blocked limbo while they decide how to kill me. I’d do the same for you.”

“Your idea of pillow talk is sweet, as always,” he mumbled. Ming-Hua bumped his chin with her forehead, and he squeezed her a little tighter.


End file.
